Three
Day: 416; Hour: 12
"You know what I think about? While I have sex?"
"Oh, Merlin." Ernie groans.
"I don't think we even want to know." Lavender laughs.
"This night just got scary, is what I think." Dean flips a card on the table between him and Ernie, and grins over his shoulder at Roger Davies.
Roger gives him a glare. "No, no... Listen. How many people in the world, do you think, are having sex right now? You know? No! No... Look. When I'm having sex, I can't help but think... how many people in the world are currently doing the same exact thing, and feeling the same exact way? It's like an orgy. Like a mind-"
"I've never been in an orgy, but I can guarantee it's not like-"
"Sure, sure, Lav." Ginny laughs and the rest follow, despite the affronted look on Lavender's face.
"So, it's like a cheap orgy," Roger tried. "It just makes it better. Sex is always better with more people."
The room laughs or bursts into agreement, and Hermione blushes and shakes her head at her knees.
Day: 422; Hour: 6
She vomits.
There isn't much to give up, but her body heaves and pushes until all that's left of the liquids and soup she's had in the past three days is on the ground. Her snot is running all down her face, and she sucks it back up, hacks it out. The feel of it along her tongue sends her gagging, and it's green bile that splashes down across her hands.
"God," she whispers pathetically.
She does not have the stomach for war, or blood, or death. She is not made for it.
She does not know his name, and she feels horrible about it now. She isn't sure why she does, but she does. His name is important, and his life was too, and this was a human being with a family. He is dead now. Dead, dead, dead, and he deserves to have her remember his name of all things.
She runs a spell, checking for a pulse, but he is pale blue. "Okay. Alright."
She wipes her hand, puke and saliva, on her jeans, and reaches up to shut his eyes. She mutters a prayer to a God he probably doesn't believe in, and flicks the blood-caked hair away from his swollen face. She moves on, because there is time to count the dead later (maybe), and absolutely no time for it now.
The figure she has just Stupefied is now back up, but she has caught on by now, and throws another one at him. It will wear off in five seconds, she knows, and so she is quick to bind him with another spell, wrapping him in rope. He moves and she stuns him again, advancing to try and find his wand. Her hands shake from the Crucio she took (twice) before realizing that they were somehow throwing off her stunning spells.
She has to stun him seven more times, all close calls to him attacking her physically, before she is able to find his wand. She runs backwards, breaking the thick length of wood and tossing it to the ground. He is back in motion against the confines of the rope, and then struggling to his feet with a roar when he finds his wand gone. Hermione is at a loss on how to handle the situation, her eyes darting the area for a way to keep him away from her without having to stun him every few seconds or- She raises her wand and casts a Dancing charm at him, trying to force her mind to remember something useful. She cries out in frustration because it feels as if her mind has broken down on her, and failed her at a pivotal moment. All that knowledge, now suddenly blanked.
She whacks the heel of her palm against her temple and clenches her teeth, groaning and impatient as she tries to think of something useful. The Death Eater currently dancing a jig several paces away yells out then, and she looks up in time to see a flash of green strike him between the eyes.
Whirling, her heart pops up into her throat, and it is Malfoy behind her. "What the fuck are you doing! You expect to have the whole lot of them dancing their way across the bloody yard? This isn't a theatre production, or for your bloody entertainment-"
"Shut up! Just shut up! They... they can't be stunned! I have... I've no idea why. I'm not-"
"Then kill them-"
"What?"
"Kill them, Granger!"
"I can't do that!" She knows she looks horrified, but she is, and so it is fitting no matter what he thinks of it.
He steps forward, waving a dirt covered hand in a wide circle. "Why? What the hell do you think happens, Granger? Maybe twenty percent of them are questioned and put in Azkaban - the rest? Dead. Dead, Granger. Shorten the fucking process and kill them!"
"I can't!"
"So you're going to have them pulling fucking ballerina moves-" he pauses, clenching his jaw and his fists and shakes his head. "Here. Here."
He moves forward quickly, grabbing the front of the shirt of the man that she had been sorry to not know the name of. "Hey!"
"Who killed him?"
"Wh- That doesn't matter!"
"It does matter, you dipshit! You dumb fucking do-gooder bitch! Do you see this? Do you see it? His guts are hanging out his bloody stomach, Granger, but you've got the guy who did it doing a fucking waltz." He seethes, drops the man down with more care than she expected, and starts toward her.
"I am not that kind of person! I-"
"Do you know that eighty-three percent of Stupefied Death Eaters are un-stunned by their allies, and walk from the battle perfectly fine? Did you know that? Almost all of them, Granger. This means, that eight out of the ten Death Eaters that you stun, end up going off and killing one of your friends. Do you like that? Hmm? Are you the kind of person who is going to let that happen?"
Hermione spots a shadow over his head, and when she raises her wand, he visibly flinches. His is raising in counter, but she has already shot, Stupefying the figure. He pauses, his wand still raised and pointing at her heart, before whirling.
"Was that a Stupefy, Granger? Was... Do you not get this! Do you not fucking get it!" They aren't questions, just a scream that have chords rising up from his neck. "Those are lives! Those are your precious Gryffindor chums hanging in the balance! Whose life is more important, Granger? Whose side are you on?"
"Screw you! You don't know-"
"I don't care if your heart is so fucking big it doesn't fit in your chest cavity, alright? I don't care if you want to save the world one bunny and house-elf at a time! If you want to save lives then you'll take them! Sacrifice some sleep like the rest of us Granger, and-"
A jet of green shoots from his wand and hits the crumpled cloak on the ground. Hermione screams and runs forward, bile making a reappearance and burning the already raw tissue of her throat.
"No! You... I... I don't..." Hermione is shaking by the time she reaches the dead, and it is with more relief than she can imagine that she drops and cries over the body of some nameless Death Eater.
"Blaise always said you would lose your mind, but fuck Granger." He sounds as if he is in disbelief.
"Shut... shut up." She sucks it up, and tries to regain some sense of normalcy, because she is acting mad and she knows it. "I... I didn't know..."
He is silent, but only for four seconds, because he can be just as quick mentally as he is physically. "What side she was sporting on her arm, you mean? Merlin. Merlin, shit, you are so incompetent! You lack everything a person should have to even be here! Do everyone a favor and either go home or get hit by something! It woul-"
"Leave me alone! I..." She growls and clenches the enemies robe in her anger. "I fucking hate you! I hate you! I hate you so much that I can explode!"
"Have at it then." It is her anger that works to calm him, and his drawl is bored.
Her hand falls on a rock, smooth and palm-sized, and she whips it at him. It hits his shoulder with a crack, and at first, he does not react at all. The moment his surprise has passed however, he has darted forward and claimed a chunk of her hair in his fingers. She cries out as her body is jerked to the side, and then forced to her feet. She punches him, square in the jaw, and she thinks her knuckles may be broken.
"Let go of me-"
"Oh, no, Granger. You wanted to get violent, hmm? You want me to fucking rip you apart?" He jerks her head back, and she can both feel and hear her hair rip from her scalp.
He lets go and grabs her chin, his fingers cutting brutally against her bones and into her skin. He pulls her up until her eyes are level with the tip of his nose and she has to stand on her tiptoes to keep all her weight off her jaw and his palm. With a hard shove, the tip of her wand jabs into the soft spot beneath his jaw.
"Going to kill me?" He looks amused, and she sneers, opening her mouth to hex him, when he speaks again. "I'll rip your fucking jaw off."
But she is not the type to back down, and so she sends him flying back anyway. His grip is almost enough to stick true to his word, but it ends up only sending pain roaring up to her brain, but no breaking. At least that she can tell, because before she can even process her injuries or the ones he may have received by crashing to the ground meters away, she is on the ground herself. He has swiped her feet out from under her, and she cannot even catch a breath in before she is being scraped across the pebbles and hard ground.
She comes to a halt, coughing and choking on the dust of dirt, and cradling her head where it has smashed off a rock. She can't even see through the cloud of dirt around her, and her shirt is grabbed, ripping as he pulls her up and forward. When his hand has released her, she finds herself on her knees in front of him with his wand to the middle of her forehead.
"That was cute," he drawls, licking the blood from his mouth with a smirk. "I am thoroughly unimpressed. Is that all? The Great Third Wheel of the Gryffindor Wonder Twins, of the Hero and the Sidekick, and that's all there is? Color me unsurprised, Granger."
"You have no idea what I'm capable of," Hermione whispers, and her wand is already trained on him, though she does not know if he has noticed.
"Nuh uh." He shoves her back down when she tries to stand. "I have a fairly good idea-"
Hermione jabs her wand into the back of his knee hard enough for him to cry out and buckle. He falls on the injured one and moves to grab her at the same time she moves to hex the hell out of him. Then, it is just Malfoy with his face twisted in anger and his hand yanking a clump of her hair at the side of her head. He pauses, eyes quickly scanning and categorizing. His hand gentles, brushing her cheek in a soft graze of his palm against her skin, and she knows he doesn't realize fully what he is doing, as he is just lowering his arm. He moves then, and before she falls, she can see him wobble and jerk his knee twice to get it to move and bend. She can see nothing but the sky after that, and the wind blows dirt into her eyes. It burns, but she can't blink. She can't move at all.
She is positive it is Lavender's voice she hears next. "Oh, Hermione! I'm so sorry! I thought..."
Then it's Malfoy, overcome with frustration. "You bleeding-heart, shit-for-brain Gryffindors!"
Day: 449; Hour: 6
Is it warm, the day she becomes a murderer. Which is not fitting in the least, and Hermione likes things when they are fitting.
It is simply because she has no choice. She is one person, standing in front of two hooded men, and suddenly there is this impossible choice that cannot be impossible any longer. There is no time to try and disarm them both, and they have all found a way (some way) around her standard stunning spells.
It leaves her like a crack. That is how she thinks about it. Like her chest plate, all the way down her ribs, cracked open with that spoken curse. This long, splintered crack in her bones that left her irrevocably damaged. Broken.
Cracked. And suddenly, so suddenly, in just seconds and clicks of clocks and time, her life is changed. Forever.
She is changed. Two words, and she will never be the same sort of girl she had looked up at those two boned masks as mere moments - seconds before. She will never be the same girl who finds it easy to judge another person for being who she now is. She will never be the same girl who has never felt that bitter, acidic taste of death rolling across her taste buds, like a cancer of the mouth.
She speaks those words, and feels pain like an animal, wild and angry, tear up from her stomach. A cold creeps up from her arms, shoots across her shoulders, and drops like a waterfall to her toes. She feels as if she has woken up in a cold puddle. As if she is drowning in air.
Then, there is a Crucio. A Cruciatus that hurts as badly as it always has, but still somehow not enough. It is seconds or minutes (but years, and years, it feels like), and then there is Malcolm Baddock above her. She knows this despite the mask, because she had held a crush for him for two weeks in fifth year, and indulged in a fantasy that he would be different and love her despite it all (she would never tell a soul). She had looked at his face for those two weeks for hours on end, and she recognized it now.
He recognizes her as well. It is enough to make him pause, his wand aimed at her head and his boot on her chest. Enough to make her gain back enough motion to raise her wand, and she kills him too. He dies, collapsed on top of her, and she can hardly move from the curse, but she slides in centimeters and forced strength until he is off of her.
There is no Ginny to crawl into bed with. There is no Harry to hug and take comfort in. There is no Ron to throw an awkward arm around her shoulders and tell her about things she didn't want to hear about, just for the sake of not having to think about what was bothering her. There was no one.
She pukes, and cries, and stares for days. Tries to sleep, eat, and can't. Tries to wipe the feel of a Killing Curse from the lay of her bones, but finds that it has been burned into her skeleton forever.
There is no going back now. There was never any going back at all. And she feels change like the coming of winter.
Day: 460; Hour: 13
"I don't think I've been to a restaurant in years." Tonks smears butter on the roll in her hand before reaching over to snag the basket back from in front of the mischievous faces of Fred and George.
Hermione has learned over time that it is an expression perpetually etched on their faces, and that it does not matter how many times one tries to sabotage their prank, because they will find ways around it. They always find any excuse for a good joke; tonight it happens to be Harry's birthday, which Tonks decided they should celebrate despite the fact he isn't here.
Lupin takes Tonks hand under the table, or at least Hermione guesses he does by the small jump of surprise in her frame and then the smile she sends his way. Unless, of course, they are doing something completely different under the tablecloth, but this is something she absolutely does not wish to think about.
Neville swirls his straw in his drink and gives her a look that lets her know he was thinking along the same lines, and they both burst into laughter to express their horrified amusement. Fred and George grin and wait for the punch line to join in, while Lupin and Tonks exchange worried glances and shift nervously.
Day: 472; Hour: 8
She is alone in the Burrow. She had been expecting Molly, and food, and warmth of friends and family, but it is empty. It is the first time she has seen it as such, and it unsettles her.
In her hand, though, is a note from Harry. It is one sentence (All is fine, be safe), and at first she thinks of how little time he must have had if that was all he managed. However, yesterday morning Ginny also received a letter. Four pages of a letter, to be accurate. Hermione had been happy for her, but there is a jealousy, ugly in her throat now. She doesn't even admit its presence to herself, let alone to anyone else, but it is there.
She reads. She had thought the chance to read in quiet would have been a happily accepted break from everything. Instead, she reads the page over and over, and then just stares at lines of black for hours on end.
Day: 489; Hour: 17
Malfoy watches silent from the table as she shows Pansy how to cook. It has been a week that they have been here alone, Pansy tells her, and three days since they have run out of anything edible.
It is the first time she has seen him outside of a mission or a meeting room since they attacked one another. She acts pompous (for no reason), just because she knows it ticks him off. He glowers, and makes comments to Pansy that he knows ticks her off in reply.
It is all very juvenile, but it feels good to be that way sometimes.
Day: 492; Hour: 5
The loud, boisterous noise of laughter and friendly yelling grinds to an unbearable silence as Malfoy and Pansy walk into the house. Malfoy scopes the room as if no one is there at all as they walk through, and Pansy pulls closer to him and keeps her eyes ahead. It is the first time Hermione sees them as what they are - the exiled duo. The two friends against the world; the couple in the middle grey; the drifters without purchase in the world.
She wonders at the guts they have to have to walk into a house packed full of rowdy Gryffindors, being the people that they are, and with the pasts they carry. The balls it takes to turn sides. The bravery and strength it takes to deal with enemies and hate from your own side, and then face down your friends at the other end of that big thing call war, all for the belief of convictions that has turned your life inside out.
She is light from two glasses of wine, and heavy in contemplation.
Day: 495; Hour: 11
There is a grunt and a plop-plunk as a body hits the stone wall beside her. Her head jerks so fast to the right that it cracks, sending a line of feel-good pain jolting up into the crown of her head.
For a moment, she swears it is Blaise Zabini beside her, but she blinks and it is Lee Jordan now. A stark contrast, the pale white hands against the dark of his skin, tilting his face up. Hermione follows those long fingers to wide wrists, and she already knows who it is before she follows up his forearms.
"What were you hit with?" His cultured accent is clipped and urgent, and for a man who always tries to pretend calm in bad situations, to look as if he is losing his cool, she now knows that their mission is as blown to hell as she thought.
"I- Don't. Don't know." Lee gasps and wheezes, and blood is spraying from his mouth with each exhale.
It lands in tiny splatters all down Malfoy's neck and shirt. He tilts Lee's head back farther, assessing his eyes, before dropping his hands away with a nod.
"Alright. Where is your Portkey?"
"I..." Lee seizes in pain, clenching his eyes shut as he tries to move for his back pocket.
Malfoy purses his lips briefly and mutters an oath, looking up at the towering black and moss-ridden stone as he reaches into Lee's pocket and grabs the Portkey. He glances over at her then, the only other witness to the fact that he has touched a man's ass, but looks unfazed by her presence.
"Are you injured?" His eyes sweep the length of her, but it is not her blood that soaks her pants - though she supposes it looks more like she may have peed herself.
"What... fuck... think." Lee winces, his whole face scrunching, and he sounds now as if he is trying to swallow his tonsils.
"Not you, fuckwit," Malfoy mutters, looking perturbed as more bright red splashes his shirt, and though she thinks he may freak out, he doesn't.
"I'm fine," Hermione replies, finally, because she feels she can breathe a little now.
He looks sharply back at her, no doubt wondering why she's fine but still seems to be sitting this one out. He is observant, though, and it doesn't take him long to piece together the story behind her position and the Death Eater dead at her feet. He looks back up at her from the crooked mask, meeting her eyes, and they are wider and more grey than she has ever remembered them to be. He looks as if he's assessing her for a potential mental breakdown, and preparing himself for just how bad it will be. There is nothing, though, but knowing in his eyes when he looks away.
"I can... I can..." Lee shakes his head, and Malfoy opens the ring box, pulling out the band and shoving it onto Lee's finger.
"You can't, actually."
It is just her and Malfoy then, and it surprises her when he turns off his haunches and collapses back against the wall. They are silent for what feels to her like forever, but it is just a minute.
"You were with Team B?"
"Osbie is dead. I saw...the boy with the red hair. I saw him go down too." This doesn't answer his question, but it is the first thing she thinks to say.
Malfoy is still, then nods. "The girl with the braids is dead. That bloke... that... Anthony, he's either back at Headquarters or on a beach somewhere. Finch-Fletchley spotted Team C and took off."
"What? We aren't supposed to leave our team members..." But she trails off, because she is a stickler for the rules, but not many people trust Malfoy to guard their backs.
Anthony probably thought his chance of survival was better with the other team. In fact, the only people she has ever heard say they trusted Malfoy was Pansy and... And Neville, as strange as that is to acknowledge (He saved my life Hermione).
"You beckoned?" A man with dark blond hair and a stubby beard is beside her, and it scares her so badly, because she should have seen him coming a mile away.
"What?" she breathes and tries to calm the wild beating.
"You activated the emergency coin..." His eyes have drifted beside her, to Malfoy now, and once she thinks about it, she can now feel the pulsing heat of it in her pocket.
"We'll wait to see how many of us are dead." Malfoy gives for explanation.
They are mostly silent for twenty minutes, and at the end of their impatience, they find themselves with less than half. Six out of fifteen (eight including the ones too injured to keep there).
"We need a new plan." Malfoy cuts all the edges.
"We need to pull out. We don't have enough people-" Dean starts.
"We do have enough people. It goes like this - we can either go in and finish the job in a sweep, or we can go and have them send us back in with the same amount of people tomorrow," the older blond man beside her cuts in.
They are quiet as the distant sounds of Unforgivables ring out. It is either two Death Eaters in confusion, or one of their own who wasn't able to make it back yet (or at all).
"Fine. Fine. So say we do stay. There's no way the six of us can take on...however many of them there are. Which, I might add, seems like a hell of a lot." The girl, who has a striking resemblance to Ginny, pokes at a section of the wall.
An argument erupts for the span of nearly ten minutes over different tactics that can be attempted, with more bickering than any ground covered, and a lot of people backing out and agreeing depending on the plan. Malfoy, it takes her a few of those minutes to realize, is growing more anxious with each passing one. He shifts, and yanks at his shirt, and rubs at his hands, and constantly pushes his hair off his face. Finally, just as Cho has reached a pitch near inhuman, he breaks.
"We go in as a group." It is amazing how precisely his voice can cut through noise and leave people paying attention. "We'll take the right, around the hedge garden...here."
He moves forward, facing them, and touches the tip of his wand to the ground. He takes a fortifying breath, mutters something to himself, and then begins to draw a game plan in the dirt.
It is the best, most sensible plan she has heard since the very beginning (even back in the boardroom with the professionals), and so she agrees the moment he is done presenting it. Four of the others fall in short order, and after much hesitation, she believes Dean is swayed more by his loyalty to her (or, perhaps, to Harry and Ron) than his distrust of anything Malfoy.
It is the first time she realizes how great of a strategist he is, despite how much he seems to hate being the one to step up and do it. So, when all six of them and the two more they find injured make it out alive and (fairly) well, she thanks him. It is the only thing he gets for coming up with something that saved them and the mission, but he still doesn't even look at her when she says it.
Day: 500; Hour: 12
It is pink and light, light purple through the leaves on the trees. The wind blows gentle on her cheek, and she closes her eyes and smiles.
Some pleasures in life are very small, but she enjoys them all the same.
Day: 505; Hour: 3
"I'm telling you, there is no way we can pull this off with only eight people!" Hermione slams her hand onto the table, making the coffee in Dean's mug slosh over the side.
"And I am telling you that you don't have a choice! I am a professional-"
"I don't care! I don't care who you are-"
"Hermione," Dean whispers, takes her wrist.
She yanks it away, because she is tired. She is tired of all these professionals waltzing in and shortchanging them on people and supplies, and shipping them out to a badly planned mission. She is so tired of it.
"It's only a recon mission, Hermione. We just have to get past a couple people and get some documents-" Colin tries.
"We need-"
"Fine! Fine, if you have such a problem with it, Granger, then leave."
"Excuse me?"
"Walk out! Go back to your cozy Burrow and home cooked meals, and leave this as a seven person job-"
"I take-"
"Go!"
"No!"
"Go!"
"I said no! I-"
"And I say, that if you don't like the fucking plan, get out. This is what's going to happen. There is no changing it, or fighting about it. You have two options; hate it and leave, or deal with it and stay."
There is silence, and Hermione braces herself against it. Pride is the biggest, most jagged thing to ever work your throat muscles around. Dean tugs again, and she sits. Sits, and stares, and burns up like a fever in her blood.
Fishier continues smugly, and when he is finished, he stares at her on his journey out of the room. Papers are shuffled and chairs scraped, and Hermione shakes her head. "You guys are honestly satisfied with this plan? Eight people, and he wants us to take these routes in."
Parkinson snorted, though she is one of the last people Hermione expects to reply. "Got a better idea, Granger? Unless you can magic people out of your arse, I don't see any other option."
"We can change the plan at least." Dean shrugs, eying the lines of blue on the board in front of them.
"He's a professional. He knows better about what-"
"I swear, Colin. Shut it up," Hermione breathes, rolling her fingers across the headache in her temples, and meeting his eyes when he looks up from his paper. "We can't split into pairs of two. It's not safe in the least. What if only one pair encounters the whole lot of who will be there?"
"So..."
"So, we'll go in as a group." Hermione stands, swallows, makes her way around the table and to the board. "All eight of us-"
"That's as ridiculous as traveling in pairs, Granger," Malfoy drawls, focusing the room's attention on him.
He looks bored, leaning back and relaxed in his chair, stretching out. The last time she had suggested a change of plans he had been the first one out of the door. The fact that he was still seated and now even participating just enforced how crocked she knew this was.
"Why? If we-"
"Two groups. One from the East, one from the West. Fishier already said the back was barred. We bar the front somehow before we go in. We'll sweep the rooms, meet in the middle, then check the North and South." Parkinson shrugs, and Malfoy stares back at her in what she takes as droll acceptance.
There is a pulse of strangeness in the air. As if everyone were sitting up and paying attention to every word and movement, because they know it is important. If Hermione went with this plan, it was showing a little faith in Parkinson, in Malfoy. In the closest thing to an enemy allowed in these rooms. They stayed because they are willing to see if they can lend any fraction of trust to the idea formed by a Muggle-born. Hermione thinks she might be able to return the favor.
"Alright. Alright, yes," she breathes, clears her throat and turns back to the board with seven waiting and watching eyes locked on her. "So...how are we going to block the front?"
Day: 511; Hour: 18
They talk about her behind her back, she knows. Some of them stretch their imagination to find out why it is she trusts Malfoy enough to follow the path he forges. Hermione will tell them, if given the opportunity, that it is because, no matter who he is or what he's done, she is willing to use the skills he has to further the advantage to their side. Hermione may be stubborn and proud, but the last thing she would do is sabotage herself and friends over her dislike for someone else.
If Malfoy is willing to give, then why shouldn't they take? Hermione is cautious of Malfoy, because she knows that he is dangerous. Perhaps not in the sense that he is a spy for Voldemort, because she thinks he wouldn't have helped at all so far. But she leaves that as a possibility, because she knows that he might be planning on sinking deeper into their circle by playing their game. Yet, she knows for a fact, that Malfoy is dangerous as a person. He was volatile, prone to fits of anger, and she always made sure to stay on guard when she was around him. At the same time, she gives him enough reluctant trust to let him lead, because he's good at it - and Hermione has far too many worries over the other side to think too much about anything that may come from hers.
Guards are moving up between her and them, her fellow Order members, but she waits out the whispers and rumors, because there is always a price to be paid for doing something good.
Day: 522; Hour: 20
"Rewrite it."
"What?"
Hermione tosses the marker to him, and it spins across the table and into the palm he has placed at the edge to block it from falling. She realizes that he probably will refuse simply on the grounds of her 'ordering' him, so she backtracks.
"I've been to this place before. In fact, I'm pretty sure you were on that mission with me, Malfoy. This layout isn't even accurate. The infiltration is good until we hit the doors, and after that, this whole plan is shot. I think you should rewrite it."
"Hermione... are you crazy?" Seamus leans forward, shaking his head slowly.
Malfoy stares at her across the room, still seemingly in a state of surprise. Then Pansy is whispering something in his ear, and by the look on her face, Hermione doesn't know if it's something negative about her or about Malfoy. She guesses the latter, considering the hard look he throws at the pinched-face girl. Sliding his chair back, he falters for a second, and then rounds the table.
"Are you fucking serious-"
"Seamus, don't talk to me like that. That language is completely unnecessary," Hermione whispers, leaning away from his hiss in her ear.
"We're bringing you to St. Mungo's-"
"She has her angry face on now." Dean sniffs.
"Let's just see what he has to say." Neville breaks up the oncoming storm.
Seamus throws his hands palm up and shakes his head at the other man. Neville only nods to where Malfoy is squiggling and crossing on the board.
"If we hate it, we tell the wanker to go sod off. If we like it, we'll do it."
"He could be in cahoots with the Death-"
"Just stop, Seamus." Hermione shakes her head, but she is watching Malfoy's tactic play out on the board.
"You, of all people-"
"I don't trust him, Seamus! He just... he pulled us out of a really bad situation a few weeks ago, and he's good. He's here to fight for our side. I don't know why, but he is, so we should use his abilities as much as we can!"
Seamus snorts and guffaws, but he will follow by the end of it. They all will.
Day: 524; Hour: 21
When Pansy sits in the worn recliner diagonal from her, she does not have the faintest idea that she will end up talking to her for well over three hours. It is full of uncomfortable pauses and awkward shifts, and is about everything and nothing all at once.
Hermione is desperate for communication, she realizes. She needs conversation and with someone other than herself, and perhaps Pansy does as well, and that is why they don't walk away from one another even when it feels so right to do so. They don't speak of war, or Malfoy, or Harry and Ron, but they speak - and that is enough.
Day: 538; Hour: 15
They hit a long period of time where absolutely nothing happens. She knows that the Death Eaters are planning something, but she also knows that her side is planning just as fervently, and that it is not her job to plan. So she waits, waits, and waits, and so much time passes that she finds herself feeling like she did before the war. Like knowing it is going to come, but not really grasping it. She is so used to empty time, and reading books, and visiting friends, that she feels safe when she closes her eyes at night. Her birthday is worry free, and almost normal, and with far more friends showing up than last year.
After such a long time, when she hears the undercurrent of news sweep up from the floorboards of the safe houses that there is a team going out to infiltrate a Death Eater hideout, she goes back into the mind of war with something else to fight for. She wants it as badly in her bones as she needs her equality.
She wants peace.
Because it is the most beautiful feeling she's ever known.
Day: 582; Hour: 10
He had come because of Pansy.
Pansy, who decided to turn traitor to her family ties. Pansy, who no one ever saw coming. He didn't trust her to be alone, and his only other option was leaving her at it and running until someone caught up. He chose to take his punishment, and remain by the side of his only friend who hadn't received the Mark burned into their forearm. He showed up with his wand drawn, offering information, money, and the Manor. He was Stupefied and locked in the Ministry holding cells for a month (though it would have been longer had it not been for Pansy) before anyone would take him up on it.
He loved her, Hermione knows, though she isn't sure if it's in the way of friendship or a beloved. They didn't hold hands, or touch one another, or share smiles. But she had seen him take Pansy to his bed four times, and saw him kiss her once just as shadows against a dark blue curtain fell. Still, she had seen friends reach for friends before, and Draco and Pansy had not been the first unsure couple she had witnessed emerging from a bedroom in the morning.
She died with Hermione still unsure. Sometimes she thinks about his reaction. Sometimes she imagines him violent and in a spitting rage; other times, she sees him silent and mournful, and with such a beautiful sadness it could clean rip your heart out of your chest. All the same, she was dead. Dead, and gone, and lost like the others, and Draco's mourning just melded into the air of war. It no longer mattered if he was in love with Pansy, or if he thought to marry her, or that if they were a couple, they didn't act like it. All that mattered was that he had loved her, in some way, and that the rebellious girl with jet-black hair and a fierce glare was the reason he was here.
She saw him, at her funeral. She felt awkward and unsure, but she had known Pansy in a distant sort of way, and she felt loss with her passing. No one really questioned her request to go, besides a slightly interested look from Lupin, and she had stuck to the back of the small gathering. Her eyes had looked to the blond more than they should have, but it is in her nature to be ready for someone else's breakdown. He did nothing though, but stood and stared, and he stayed when it was over. She whispered something she can't now recall when she passed him, aiming for something brief and soothing, but he just kept staring at the gravestone. She imagines his loss must be something like how it would feel to lose one of her best friends, and it made the sadness sharper to her somehow. There was sympathy for him, and it was something she never thought she would feel in regards to the blond.
He seemed to have lost his footing a little after Pansy died. Hermione imagines he looked around himself and wondered what he was doing and why he was even still there. Then, after two months and one week, he was suddenly back. Back with all the conviction of revenge, and fighting for something more than just survival. Hermione is pretty sure he is still fighting for Pansy; probably for a lot of other reasons too, but for her most of all.
It was this sort of loyalty, and the kind that led him there to begin with, that first intrigued her about him. That made her see the first thin link between him and her - their fierce devotion to their friends, damn the consequence. Though, while Hermione was devoted to nearly everyone, he seemed only devoted to Pansy. Only very few people earned that position in his life, where they deserved his loyalty. After Pansy died, he switched that loyalty to the cause, though it really was still for her.
If Pansy had died earlier, she doesn't think he would have stayed. He was so uncomfortable in his skin around them, and had he not had enough time to grow so used to that feeling, she suspects he would have walked out the second he got the news. Would be in some distant country, removed so far from the option of sides, the name of a traitor, the ghost of the past, the hardships of war and the debt of a Malfoy, that he could fade into obscurity and live his life alone and away from all the reminders of who he was and who he tried to be.
But, he hadn't.
He stayed.
Draco Malfoy has something to prove, she figures. To Pansy, to his father, to them, to himself; any or all, she doesn't know. But he is out for something more than what he had ever come in with. Hermione doesn't know if he'll ever find it.
Day: 619; Hour: 7
"I heard we're winning."
Hermione gives Anthony a sharp look. "There's no way to possibly know that."
"More Death Eaters have been captured or killed in the past three months than we've had on our side."
"That doesn't always mean something." Lavender joins the conversation from the porch, a slim cigarette resting between her fingers. She picked up the dirty habit a month ago, when she came back from the Muggle world after three weeks.
"Sure it does. Look, they are losing more, and the war is cooling down. We don't have as many battles or Death Eater occurrences anymore-"
"That's because they thought they could defeat us by going all out in the beginning. They just wanted to attack, attack, attack without any real planning behind it. Take us by surprise and overwhelm us. When it stopped working, they stopped doing it. It's going into more strategy now." Dean speaks up from the broom he is polishing to be ready for the Quidditch match they are playing at Grimmauld tomorrow.
A group of them decided it was time to release some tension in a friendly match, which quickly turned into three matches, with the amount of people who decided they want to play. It is a show of how different things have turned now, Hermione thinks, because there had never been time or energy for that in the beginning of this all.
Day: 630; Hour: 14
There are footsteps coming down the hall, and when they pause, Hermione turns her head over her shoulder to look at Malfoy. For a moment he seems just as surprised to see her, but then it is gone, and his eyes are on the sink as he moves toward it. Hermione blinks and looked back out the window, where Ginny is grinning as she teases the other team for the goal she just scored.
"Why aren't you out there?" She isn't sure why she even asked, but there it is, hanging in the silence he creates.
At first she doesn't think he will answer, but then he makes a sound in his throat over the running water from the tap. "I fight enough not to volunteer myself for another."
"It's a game."
"Is that so." It's not a question, because they both know the answer. Every Bludger in the air would find its way to Malfoy's head. Hermione doesn't know why she didn't realize this first, but perhaps she did, and just wanted to try and take the awkwardness out of the air.
She feels bad for bringing it up, despite who he is, because that is her nature. She never intends to cause other people hurt, unless they deserve it. She hasn't spoken or even been in close proximity with Malfoy since Pansy died, so he hasn't done anything to deserve any cruelty from her. As far as she has heard, Malfoy has been just as much a part of Order's side as she has been since the war began. Sometimes she gets so caught up in the present, that she forgets she can damn him for the past. And a lot of times, she gets so concentrated on what is wrong now, that she forgets to care about the past at all. Why taunt a member of her own side when there was a war to fight? She puts it down to maturity, or something she doesn't understand.
She imagines herself on that tower sometimes, but not as herself, but Malfoy. She imagines the circumstance she heard he was under, and pictures what Dumbledore must look like through slate grey eyes that never saw any help come from the twinkling blue across from him. She thinks about her wand held out in front of her, and why she must do it, but always fails when she tries to find out if she would. What if it was Snape, with loyalties to the other side? Her wand would level out, she thinks. Would she be able to follow through, knowing what was on the line? Maybe now. Yes, now, maybe. And she hates herself for that just a little, because she knows she can kill when it comes to the choice between herself and her friends, against a Death Eater.
Draco Malfoy couldn't. Not then, at that point, just as much as she is not sure she could have then either. It is strange, looking through the scope of Malfoy's life, and wondering. If she just changed some of the key players, what if it had been her? She thinks about it a lot, because now when there is hardly anyone around she knows, there is a lot of thinking to be done. Malfoy's name comes up, or she sees him across lengths, and she thinks. And, most of the time, she understands. Because Hermione has always been the sort of person who wanted, and could see the world through someone else's vantage point. Not a Death Eater, not an enemy, but someone who might prove themselves to be something more worthy than her hate.
So she pictures it as herself at that tower, with the Order creeping through the passage she opened for them, and an enemy to their side standing across from her. Her parents and herself are on the line, and all her friends as well, because if she can achieve it, she would mark an important victory to her side. Does she do it?
And at the moment when those pretend emotions manifest themselves into her body, until they are boiling up and choking her at the base of her throat, her view will change. It will be Malfoy, standing across from her, and her through the eyes of Dumbledore, and suddenly her understanding of why Malfoy did it will rest entirely on Dumbledore's understanding. But she will never know the answer, will she? Not ever.
Malfoy is gone by the time she pulls herself from her thoughts, and the Quidditch game continues with just as much good cheer as it had begun.
Day: 640; Hour: 10
The Death Eaters attack three villages on Christmas Day, and there is only Ginny, Fred, and herself at the Burrow. They try conversation, and getting into the holiday spirit, but are too worried and the day feels nothing like Christmas at all.
Instead, they wait until they are sure that everyone they are going to order to go has already gone, and get drunk off cheap champagne and eggnog.
Day: 643; Hour: 12
Moody walks in step with Malfoy, and it is the first time she has seen the patch over his eye in so many months that it looks strange now. She is stunned by their sudden appearance across the street in Muggle England, and wonders what it is they are doing here, despite that it is information she is likely not privy too. Just as much as Malfoy is not privy to the reason why she is there.
They are speaking, and Moody suddenly looks amused before clamping a hand over Malfoy's shoulder and replying to what was said. Hermione blinks at the contact because Moody isn't one for it, and it's gone before she fully acknowledges that it was there. Malfoy must have done something to please him, as that small gesture was all that Harry ever received from the man when he had achieved something Moody thought an accomplishment. It feels odd seeing him give Malfoy the same acknowledgment, and she almost runs straight into the woman in front of her from being so distracted.
When she looks up again, Moody and Malfoy are both looking back at her, and Moody gives a slight nod before her view is blocked by a bus. When it passes, they are gone.